SERBIAN COURT CONVICTS FOUR FOR SREBRENICA-RELATED WAR

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BELGRADE 000477

SIPDIS

SIPDIS
SENSITIVE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PHUM KJUS PGOV PREL SR
SUBJECT: SERBIAN COURT CONVICTS FOUR FOR SREBRENICA-RELATED WAR
CRIMES



1. (sbu) Summary: On April 10, the Belgrade Special War Crimes
Court handed down convictions to four former members of the
"Scorpions" paramilitary unit for their roles in the execution of
Muslim civilians in Trnovo, Bosnia, on July 17, 1995. Chief war
crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic said he was partially pleased
with the verdict, which he said proved the commission of war crimes
in Srebrenica. Victims' families, local war crimes NGO's, and even
the prosecutor and President Tadic, though, voiced disappointment
over, inter alia, the leniency of the sentencing given the
compelling, graphic visual evidence of the crimes (a videotape
prominently aired in 2005). While it is significant that a Serbian
court has once again convicted Serbs on war crimes charges, much
more needs to be done for Serbia to deal fully with the legacy of
the crimes of the 1990's. End summary.


2. (sbu) On April 10, the Belgrade special court for war crimes
handed down convictions to four members of a paramilitary unit known
as the "Scorpions" for their role in the execution-style slaying of
bound Muslim civilians in Trnovo, Bosnia, on July 17, 1995. The
genesis of the conviction was a graphic video taken by Scorpion
members of the executions that clearly showed the identity of the
perpetrators and the incontrovertible inhumanity of their actions.
The video was played fairly widely on Serbian television in July
2005, prompting the government to arrest five men and begin a court
case against them. The two ringleaders of the group in the video,
Scorpion commander Slobodan "Boca" Medic and Branislav Medic, each
received the maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison
(maximum sentencing being defined as the maximum possible at the
time the crimes were committed - Serbia's criminal code did not
increase maximum sentencing to 40 years until 2002, well after these
crimes were committed). Others involved in the crime were given
reduced sentences of 13 and five years, while one defendant,
Aleksander Vukov, was actually acquitted on the grounds that the
trial chamber found no evidence to support the claim (he was not
shown on the video, but the prosecution claims to have eyewitnesses
putting him in the unit's command bunker in the hills surrounding
the "killing field.").


3. (sbu) Serbia's chief war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic,
told local media he was "partially satisfied" by the result of the
trial, noting that it represented an acknowledgement in Serbia that
war crimes were committed in Srebrenica. He expressed
disappointment, though, at the relative leniency of some of the
sentences, and vowed to appeal the cases of those who received less
than the maximum sentence. He also promised to continue the
prosecution of the case, which included tracking down another three
co-defendants currently believed to be living abroad (a ninth
co-defendant, Slobodan Davidovic, was convicted in Zagreb in
December, 2005 and is serving a 15-year sentence in Croatia).
President Tadic also voiced disappointment over the sentencing,
noting that the maximum sentences should have been handed down
across the board.


4. (sbu) Critics of the court and the process have been even more
vocal. The families of the victims, on site for the verdict and the
sentencing, condemned the leniency of the verdicts, claiming that no
punishment would be sufficient for the crimes committed. The NGO
community was similarly incensed. Natasa Kandic, internationally
respected director of the Humanitarian Law Center, a Belgrade-based
war crimes watchdog organization, decried not so much the sentencing
as what she saw as a deliberate attempt to de-link the actions of
the Scorpions from support she says the unit received both from the
Serbian armed forces (VJ) and the State Security service (DB). She
has complained that the investigation did not continue higher up the
chain of command (i.e., past Medic to Belgrade) from whence she says
the instructions ultimately came. She cites as evidence of the
Scorpions' ties to the VJ, inter alia, their military insignia and
the fact that their official correspondence was directed to a VJ
postal address (the Serbian equivalent of an APO/FPO address). Her
criticisms are more deeply felt following the ICJ ruling in the
Bosnia v. FRY case, which many civil society leaders in Serbia
thought dealt a grave injustice by, essentially, absolving
Belgrade's leadership of complicity and support for ethnic cleansing
in Bosnia. Moreover, a lawyer for the local Helsinki Committee who
observed the trial noted that the judge in the case used her bench
for political grandstanding, categorizing the conflicts as, e.g.,
"the civil war in Bosnia" and stating that "Serbia was not at war" -
both common Milosevic-era shibboleths.


5. (sbu) Ironically - or perhaps pointedly - on the same day,
local media also reported that a first-instance conviction of Sasa
Radak for war crimes in Ovcara (near Vukovar, Croatia) had been
overturned by the Serbian Supreme Court and returned for retrial.
It was the second Ovcara-related case overturned by the Supreme
Court. The third, considered to be minor since it involved only one
ailing defendant, was upheld in the second instance and is now in
full legal force. Aside from that conviction, the only other
prosecution from the War Crimes Court that has been upheld is the
conviction of Anton Lekaj, an ethnic Albanian convicted of war
crimes against Serbs. Two other domestic war crimes cases
overturned and later upheld by the Supreme Court - Podujevo and

BELGRADE 00000477 002 OF 002


Sjeverin - were prosecuted in the District Court vice the War Crimes
Court.


6. (sbu) Comment: We should not underestimate the significance of
a Serbian court again convicting Serbs on charges of war crimes.
This decision follows other first-instance convictions of Serbs in
the Ovcara, Podujevo, and Sjeverin cases. While the sentences might
seem lenient by American standards, three of the defendants in the
Scorpions case received the harshest sentence available under
Serbian law. Moreover, this conviction establishes for the first
time in a Serbian court that Serbians carried out war crimes against
civilians of Srebrenica. This is important, given that polls
regularly show that only one-third of Serbians believe that Serb
forces killed large numbers of Muslim prisoners at Srebrenica --
despite the airing of the Scorpions videotape.


7. (sbu) While an important step forward, much more remains to be
done for Serbia to deal fully with the legacy of the crimes of the
1990's. Most of the progress accomplished so far has been due to
the efforts of the prosecutors, investigators, and judges attached
to the Special War Crimes Court itself. The appeals court -- in
this case the Serbian Supreme Court -- has been generally
unreceptive to the first-instance convictions. In every significant
first-instance war crimes conviction so far, the Supreme Court has
overturned the conviction upon first review (although it later
upheld at least two convictions following re-trials). The laxity of
the Serbian appeals process (even the most minute technical errors
can be cause for an overturning, if a judge so chooses, even if they
have no bearing on the outcome of the case),coupled with a
widespread belief that the Supreme Court is still packed with
Milosevite judges, will complicate the efforts of those Serbs
committed to a vigorous pursuit of justice for the victims of
Serb-instigated ethnic cleansing in the 1990's.
POLT